“They say it’s in Heaven that all angels dwell,
But I’ve come to learn they’re on earth just as well;
And how would I know that the like could be so,
If I hadn’t found one down here below?
CHORUS.
A sweet little Angel that went o’er the sea,
With the emblem of God in her hand;
A wonderful Angel who brought there to me
The sweet of a war-furrowed land.
The crown on her head was a ribbon of red,
A symbol of all that’s divine;
Though she called each a brother she’s more like a mother,
Salvation Lassie of Mine.
Perhaps in the future I’ll meet her again,
In that world where no one knows sorrow or pain;
And when that time comes and the last word is said,
Then place on my bosom her band of red.”
By “Jack” Caddigan and “Chick” Stoy.
That day a shell fell on the dugout where they had slept the night before, and a little later one dropped next door to the canteen; another took seven men from the signal corps right in the street near by, and the girls were ordered out of the village because it was no longer safe for them.
One of the boys had been up on a pole putting up wires for the signal corps. These boys often had to work as now under shell fire in daytime because it was necessary to have telephone connections complete at once. A shell struck him as he worked and he fell in front of the canteen. They had just carried him away to the ambulance when his chum and comrade came running up. A pool of blood lay on the floor in front of the canteen, and he stood and gazed with anguish in his face. Suddenly he stooped and patted the blood tenderly murmuring, “My Buddy! My Buddy!” Then like a flash he was off, up the pole where his comrade had been killed to finish his work. That is the kind of brave boys these girls were serving.
IX.
The Argonne Drive
That night they slept in the woods on litters, and the next day they went on farther into the woods, twelve kilometres beyond what had been German front.
Here they found a whole little village of German dugouts in the form of log cabin bungalows in the woods. It was a beautifully laid out little village, each bungalow complete, with running water and electric lights and all conveniences. There were a dance hall, a billiard room, and several pianos in the woods. There were also fine vegetable gardens and rabbit hutches full of rabbits, for the Germans had been obliged to leave too hastily to take anything with them.